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By admin, August 8, 2020 12:07 am

I’ve been talking with students about the use of vocabulary, “licks”, and learned musical sentences in improvisation.  If we compare music to visual art, I think sometimes it can be helpful to practice improvisation more like creating a collage than trying to paint something completely new on a blank canvas – taking previously discovered melodies and ideas and arranging them in interesting ways.  I’ve been focusing a bit more on some old vocabulary for my own playing, and trying to put it together, doing my best to avoid running through patterns and focusing specifically on melodies.  Here’s a little sample of that from some car practice I was doing a while ago (in the days of Covid, and everyone working from home, it seemed like the courteous thing to do).  Hope you like it!

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By admin, February 12, 2020 8:22 pm

When I was 15 my family went to Berkeley CA to visit my brother at college, and the Tower Records store there had a CD called “The Best Blue Note Album Ever”, a double-disc compilation.

I was getting into jazz/BAM at the time but I don’t think I knew what Blue Note was. I bought the CDs. Track 2 was Blue Train (I would mostly just listen to the first 15 seconds of Coltrane’s solo) and Track 1 was this song: Song For my Father, with the great Joe Henderson on saxophone. Kenny Garrett said that 2 musicians who always sounded to him like they were playing the blues no matter what the musical situation was were Bobby Hutcherson and Joe Henderson. I think about that, especially when I listen to this solo. So funky.

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By admin, September 11, 2019 12:48 pm

I learned this short solo for fun for my wife a little while ago after we put the song on our wedding playlist, but lost the video on a broken phone!  I decided to try it again and put it up here.  After a little bit of research, I discovered the saxophonist is the great Branford Marsalis, which is a fun bit of trivia!  Without diving into discussions about tone, there’s some of the ornamentations and style here that point to a lot of saxophonists that would be considered Smooth Jazz, and it would be interesting to get more into that language, just for my own knowledge if nothing else.

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By admin, August 16, 2019 4:46 pm

Hi everyone!  For this transcription, I went to one of the most influential saxophonists from the 1970’s through the early 2000’s.  Although many of Brecker’s solos would take significantly longer for me learn, this little clip is from a medium-tempo tune and he largely sticks to 8th note ideas, so I had a better chance!  It is also is over a standard chord progression, the 1st section on Autumn Leaves, so it’s a cool opportunity to hear what he does over conventional harmony.

Even with that, Brecker’s exploration of range and sound leave a lot for me to work on, and I feel like I began practicing jazz saxophone at a period just after a lot of people were focused on him, so I haven’t really delved into it as much as I should have.  No time like the present!

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By admin, June 18, 2019 10:25 am

Theoretics released a new track, “Suspended Animation”, last week, part of an EP that we hope to release in the near future, funded by pay-what-you-want donations.  You can check it out here: 

https://theoretics.bandcamp.com/album/suspended-animation-3?fbclid=IwAR3xPbt23Jebf3QftaaSO2YgY-fI00VB0Kp3tB32T7S6ox79EWH3T_NLRWU

The group has taken a break for a while now, mostly focusing on getting the last of our creative material out on this EP and then seeing where we want to go from there, and the break was taken for a lot of reasons, but it’s hard not to look back and try to figure out what we could have done to give this music a little more traction when we were playing more shows and releasing more music.

The looking back is a process I’ve gone through with several groups I’ve been in that are gone now, and I’ve talked with other Seattle musicians about it.  You think about the quality and accessibility of the music, the role that luck plays, and all of the non-musical elements (promotion, networking, marketing, etc.), and other ingredients that are supposed to combine to be the “winning” recipe.  I surround “winning” with quotation marks because just defining that word for the given group/band is an important part of the process too.  What are our expectations with our music?  How far do we expect the music to go?

I think I have a pretty good idea how accessible (or inaccessible) the music I play is, in all of the groups I’ve been involved with, but every band I’ve played with in the past that could not get the momentum to continue moving forward leaves me with the same questions.  I guess it’s part of the life cycle of bands and musical groups.

This isn’t to say that Theoretics is no longer a group!  However, the dip in activity leaves some space to reflect here.  

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By admin, May 22, 2019 2:49 pm

Hi all!

It’s been a little while but here’s a bit of some music that’s had my attention lately.

This is a bit of Woody Shaw’s trumpet solo on Joe Henderson’s song “If”, off of Larry Young’s Unity (lots of credits, there!) I love Joe Henderson but I had to try some of Shaw’s ideas because they are so interesting, although I tried swapping out some of the trumpetisms for saxophone false fingerings.

I’ve been listening to a couple new albums as well, from new Blue Note artists James Francies and Joel Ross.  Check out their websites below!

http://www.jamesfranciesmusic.com

http://www.iplayvibes.com/

Art

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By admin, February 20, 2019 3:37 pm

Playing Alto Saxophone exclusively when I was studying in college means that most of my knowledge is still pretty deeply related to that voice; I didn’t learn songs or jazz solos in all keys (which I should have), and for most of my time as a musician I heard ideas on alto rather than on tenor.

Because of that history, I have been energized recently by learning jazz standards on tenor in addition to continuing to transcribe tenor saxophonists, and it is especially fun to work on Coltrane.  Even though I’ve listened to him quite a bit and learned 1 or 2 of his solos on alto, studying his playing while actually playing tenor opens up so much, and it’s great to actually play those Coltrane idioms I’ve heard for so long (or at least try to imitate them!). This clip is rough, with plenty of things I still need a lot of work on, but I’m really enjoying it so I thought I would post it here!

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By admin, December 14, 2018 12:08 pm

This clip is from a solo from Aldana’s first album, released in 2010.  I’ve really gotten into her playing the last couple of months for a few particular reasons.  I think she’s one of the tenor players currently on the scene that really explores changing tone and expression while executing technical ideas at the same time.  She openly holds up Sonny Rollins as a really big influence for that approach, so her music has also led me back to Sonny, which of course is inspiring as well!

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By admin, November 15, 2018 11:58 am

Although tour has now ended, I am going to pick up where I left off and continue giving some day-to-day posts from the road. These will lead up to Polyrhythmics’ big shows in Portland this Friday and Bend this Saturday, as well as the grand finale in Seattle on November 24.

A few things about Eric Rouse.

Polyrhythmics met Eric at one of our shows years ago, and he’s come to many shows since.  For this Midwest run, Eric offered to drive himself, put himself up, and follow us on tour to sell merchandise for us.  This was incredibly gracious, obviously!  I didn’t know exactly how it would go, to be honest, because it’s so different to hang with friends at shows, when the focus is to have fun and get down, than work with them and have them deal with the business side of things the way that we do on the road.

Also, we’ve been lucky to have enthusiastic, genuine, and positive merchandise heads in the past; our good friends Lauren and Maxianne did several extended tours with us, handling all things merch-related.  But with this tour, Eric did awesome.  He was a valuable asset, and we were grateful to have him, as we have been with all of our merch family!

The Old Rock House in St. Louis was a beautiful restored old building (established in 1818!) with a big stage and big dance floor.  As I mentioned in the last post, the folks that brought us there were really enthusiastic, and the crowd was a little thin but absolutely could not wait to talk to us and tell us to come back.  The Gateway Arch looms over the entire city, and is really impressive.  I thought it was really cool, but I didn’t have time to explore.  After the show, I flew home to teach for a couple days (as well as do laundry, pay bills, and make sure the cats still recognize me).

I would meet back up with the guys on Day 12, in Boise.  More on that next!

Current listening:  Makaya McCraven, “Where We Come From”

After Elijah (I know him as Eli, but I believe he’s come to introduce himself as Elijah) and I connected on London artists like Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, both of whom I’ve talked about before, he hipped me to Chicago musician Makaya McCraven.  McCraven played the Royal Room in Seattle a couple months back, it so happens, but his most recent album is a collaboration between London and Chicago musicians, with songs and improvisations remixed/cut up or left alone, and all released on a single record.  It’s a super inspiring project, with a story as interesting as the music itself!

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By admin, November 14, 2018 2:23 pm

Although tour has now ended, I am going to pick up where I left off and continue giving some day-to-day posts from the road. These will lead up to Polyrhythmics’ big shows in Portland and Bend this weekend, as well as the grand finale in Seattle on November 24.

“Will it play in Peoria?”

Before I left for tour, my dad told me about this figure of speech.  I had never heard it before, but if there’s a whole Wikipedia entry for it, it must be worth something, right?

Our gig in Peoria brought us back into Illinois, to Kenny’s Westside Pub.  Kenny’s had some delicious takes on Irish pub food and some very energetic costumed music fans.  This was one of the latest shows on the tour, and although we were a little paranoid we’d be wiped, I think the energy was up until the end, even as a loyal handful of folks were still partying.

After playing Kenny’s, on the drive to our hotel, I had a good conversation with Ben about expectations and ticket sales on this Midwest tour.  The promoter for our Peoria show is also responsible for booking other events and venues in the area, and the booker at our St. Louis show the following night was in a similar role there.  Most of my experiences playing gigs deals with venue owners and people that work for the venue directly, and for better or for worse, that sometimes makes their number one priority filling the room and selling tickets.  Granted, you can’t play music that nobody likes; you have to find the audience and the appropriate spaces to do what you do, and try to run business accordingly, but it occurred to me on this tour that I don’t think about “tastemakers” all that much, and that’s what these guys are doing.  

I’ll talk more about St. Louis in the next post, but both promoters were extremely passionate about our music after we finished our shows.  They were ready to go to bat for us if nobody showed up and were ready to go to bat for us after people lost their minds too, and in writing this post I’m thinking about some of the people I know in Seattle that do the same thing, some working at venues, some running festivals or non-profits, etc.  

Sometimes it’s easy for me to be apprehensive about venues and promoters, to think that some will book anything that sells tickets.  But in general, I’ve been lucky to deal largely with people that are on the same mission I am, and the more I can reason out my cynicism and get rid of it, the better things will be, I think.  Thank you, all you tastemakers!

Current Listening:  Noname, “Room 25”

I caught a little bit of Noname at Capitol Hill Block Party some time ago, but this tour I listened to her most recent album, “Room 25”, and I like it a lot.  I think the songs are well-written and create a real mood, and Noname is a very talented vocalist and musician.  Check it out!

NEXT, for real this time:  St. Louis